Boundary questionnaire results in the mentally healthy elderly

The Hartmann Boundary Questionnaire was administered twice, with sir months in between, to 61 Swiss subjects over 60 years of age taking part in an in vestigation into the effects of dream-telling on five variables: well-being , sleep quality, sleep duration, dream recall and dream tone. in addition, dream epoch, i.e., rite age of life of the dreamer as perceived in the drea m, was recorded for those ho told dreams. In addition to this study group i n which the members told dreams there were two control groups. Those in the first control group were asked about well-being and sleep quality bur nor about dreams or dreaming, while those in the second control group were addi tionally asked how many dreams they! had retained, how frequently they had occur red and about the dream tone (pleasant/unpleasant). All study partici pants were given the Hartmann Boundary Questionnaire at the beginning (pre- rest) and again at the end of the sir month study period (post-test). The r etest reliability was high (r = 0.872 for the whole sample). We report here the relationships obtained between the Questionnaire scores and age, group membership, gender and the number of dreams that were retained over a 26 w eek testing period. No significant correlations were found for age, group m embership or dream recall. There was, however; a small, significant boundar y score difference between women and men for the pre-test, indicating thinn er boundaries for women, but this difference was no longer significant in t he post-test.